Richard Parncutt

Richard Parncutt is a musicologist specialising in the psychology of music. Since 1998, he has been Professor of Systematic Musicology at the University of Graz, Austria. His research has appeared in Music Perception, Musicae Scientiae, Perception & Psychophysics, Journal of New Music Research, Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies, Music Performance Research, Australian Journal of Psychology, Contemporary Music Review, Perspectives of New Music, and Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale (full-length articles as first or only author; anonymous peer-review procedure). His publications address musical structure (pitch, consonance, harmony, tonality, tension, rhythm, meter, accent), music performance (psychology, piano, applications), the origins of tonality and of music, and musicological interdisciplinarity. He holds qualifications in music and physics from the University of Melbourne and a PhD from the University of New England, Australia. He was guest researcher with Ernst Terhardt (Munich), Johan Sundberg (Stockholm), Annabel Cohen (Halifax, Canada), Al Bregman (Montreal), and John Sloboda (Keele, England). He is or was a board member of all leading music psychology journals, founding academic editor of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies (JIMS), and (co-) founder of three conference series: Conference on Interdisciplinary Musicology (CIM), Conference on Applied Interculturality Research (cAIR), and International Conference of Students of Systematic Musicology (SysMus).

Best recent publications
  • Parncutt, R., & Hair, G. (2011). Consonance and dissonance in theory and psychology: Disentangling dissonant dichotomies. Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies,5 (2), 119-166. pdf
  • Parncutt, R. (2011). The tonic as triad: Key profiles as pitch salience profiles of tonic triads. Music Perception, 28, 333-365. pdf 
  • Parncutt, R., & Dorfer, A. (2011).  The role of music in the integration of cultural minorities. In I. Deliege & J. Davidson (Eds.), Music and the mind (Essays in Honour of John Sloboda) (pp. 379-411). Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press. pdf
  • Parncutt, R. (2009). Prenatal and infant conditioning, the mother schema, and the origins of music and religion. Musicae Scientiae, Special issue on Music and Evolution (Ed. O. Vitouch & O. Ladinig), 119-150. pdf 
Career-best publications
  • Parncutt, R., & McPherson, G. E. (Eds., 2002). The science and psychology of music performance: Creative strategies for teaching and learning. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0-19-513810-4. oup info abstracts and reviews
  • Parncutt, R., Sloboda, J. A., Clarke, E. F., Raekallio, M., & Desain, P. (1997). An ergonomic model of keyboard fingering for melodic fragments. Music Perception, 14, 341-382. pdf 0.3 MB
  • Parncutt, R. (1994). A perceptual model of pulse salience and metrical accent in musical rhythms. Music Perception, 11, 409-464. pdf 1.5 MB
  • Parncutt, R. (1989). Harmony: A psychoacoustical approach. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 3-540-51279-9; 0-387-51279-9. reviews and downloads citations
  • Parncutt, R. (1988). Revision of Terhardt's psychoacoustical model of the root(s) of a musical chord. Music Perception, 6, 65-94. pdf 1.3 MB

Curriculum vitae
Research
Teaching
individual courses
general information


Photography: Sissi Furgler

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Richard Parncutt, Centre for Systematic Musicology, University of Graz